The president said he was making diplomatic overtures, but also pledged gravely that the United States would “defend our allies from aggression.” To that end, American planes were being flown to South Korea starting that day. Horner posed the question that most bedeviled LBJ: What would he do if diplomacy failed?
“I hope it will not be necessary to use military force,” Johnson said. “I am neither optimistic or pessimistic about this. It may be that we will lose the ship and the men, although I do not want to even think about that.”
Acting on the president’s demand for an in-depth background probe of Bucher, Navy detectives knocked on the doors of his friends and acquaintances in Bremerton, San Diego, and Japan.
Agents of the Naval Investigative Service examined the captain’s financial records and made a “discreet inquiry” into rumors that he drank to excess. One informant said he thought Bucher had been drunk one afternoon at the Bremerton shipyard; the captain had red eyes and smelled of alcohol. But the yard superintendent, who’d clashed so often with Bucher, came to his defense, denying he was ever intoxicated during duty hours.
The NIS gumshoes also contacted several officers who’d served with Bucher in Submarine Flotilla Seven. Captain Henry Sweitzer, Bucher’s commanding officer at the sub base, praised him as “a very fine officer” who put in 12- and 13-hour days and usually spent Saturdays and Sundays at the office as well. Sweitzer said he had “nothing but good things to say” about Bucher’s professional performance, adding that he was a loyal Navy officer and dedicated family man.
Bucher’s immediate supervisor at SUBFLOTSEVEN, Captain Maurice Horn, didn’t hold him in such high esteem. While Bucher generally was hardworking and dependable, Horn said, he fell short on occasion. For instance, he might forget an important detail when drafting an operational order for one of the squadron’s subs, or abruptly leave the office “when he felt he had worked long enough.” Horn rated him as merely “a good sailor.” Off duty, added Horn, Bucher was “a hard-charger party type” who “knew virtually every bar-girl in Yokosuka.”
Investigators found a large kernel of truth in Horn’s exaggeration. They delved deeply into Bucher’s nocturnal rambles through Yokosuka, a garish bluejacket’s paradise that featured some 250 nightclubs and bars teeming with receptive Japanese “hostesses.” The women earned a percentage of the money customers spent on drinks for them. Their paychecks averaged $110 a month, and many supplemented that meager income with prostitution. Some hostesses took drugs or dealt in black-market goods, while others worked in the bars in hopes of finding an American to marry. Those with criminal records often supplied information to Navy and Japanese police; some were reputed members of the Japanese Communist Party.
The NIS men grilled hostesses, bartenders, and old Navy buddies, asking bluntly about Bucher’s “morals.” One ex-shipmate, Lieutenant Phil Stryker, grew so incensed at the questions that he threw a punch at his interviewer. Nonetheless, the agents soon discovered Bucher had done his share of philandering in his SUBFLOTSEVEN days. Two bar girls confided having had sex with the captain, one on “several occasions.” A third implied that she’d had a serious affair with him in 1964, when his wife, Rose, was still in the States.
The detectives also interviewed an “attractive” 42-year-old bar owner who often accompanied Bucher to officers’ clubs. Their relationship apparently was purely social; indeed, the bar owner also became friendly with Rose after she moved to Japan, describing her as a “very personable woman who appeared devoted to [Bucher] and their children.” The bar owner and virtually everyone else the NIS bloodhounds spoke to characterized the captain as an intelligent, engaging man who drank steadily but never lost control or blabbed military secrets to whoever happened to be sitting on the next bar stool.
Bucher had, however, invited several Japanese civilians aboard the Pueblo, according to the NIS dossier. That may have been his way of thumbing his nose at Steve Harris and his spook superiors, but it was still a potential security breach. In addition, the captain had escorted an inebriated bar girl to the wardroom late one night for coffee. She stayed overnight but claimed she didn’t have intercourse with Bucher. On another occasion he assigned Gene Lacy to give three Japanese university students a tour of the Pueblo, again creating a security problem.
As Navy investigators made their rounds, the CIA was delivering a secret psychological assessment of Bucher to the White House.
The Agency profilers apparently limited their research to reading the skipper’s fitness reports and medical records and interviewing one former commanding officer. His early performance in the Navy, they said, was only average; Bucher seemed to need “somewhat more supervision” than others of his rank. He drew his lowest ratings in the categories of “military bearing, cooperativeness and personal conduct of his affairs.” The psychologists were especially interested in why he’d signed the North Korean confession. They didn’t believe a seasoned naval officer like Bucher would crack “even under intense psychological coercion.” It evidently didn’t occur to them, sitting in their comfortable stateside offices, that much of the coercion might have been brutally physical. The only possible explanation, they felt, was that Bucher had signed the statement “without realizing its significance”—a deduction that defied credibility in view of the captain’s intelligence.
The CIA analysts concluded that there was no reason to think Bucher was anything but a loyal American. However, they couldn’t resist pointing out what they seemed to regard as a significant character flaw: the captain’s “strong inclination to become too involved with his men.”
By the end of January, the American buildup in South Korea was in full swing. So many fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance aircraft poured into Osan, Kunsan, and other air bases that an overcrowding problem arose. Ground crews worked around the clock to accommodate the new arrivals; airmen slept on cold hangar floors for lack of barracks space.
Two more aircraft carriers—the USS Yorktown and the USS Ranger—joined the Enterprise in the Sea of Japan. The flattops and their accompanying cruisers, destroyers, and supply vessels formed a powerful battle group: about 25 warships in all. On the Enterprise flight deck, two jets bearing nuclear bombs sat ready for instant takeoff, pilots in their cockpits at all times. In addition, nine submarines kept an eye on both North Korean coasts.
Concerned by the presence of this American armada relatively close to their shores, the Soviets made their own show of force. By February 7, more than a dozen Russian warships—including two cruisers and three guided missile destroyers—had taken up station near the U.S. carriers. One or two Russian submarines were believed to be in the vicinity, and more ships were steaming down from Vladivostok.
A Soviet destroyer shadowed the Ranger, and a surveillance trawler, the Gidrolog, trailed the Enterprise. The crowded waters soon produced a collision. A Russian merchant ship, the Kapitan Vislobokov, ran into an American destroyer screening the Ranger. The USS Rowan suffered a three-foot gash in its hull above the waterline, but no one aboard either vessel was hurt.
Early one morning, a squadron of Soviet jet bombers, flying just 100 feet above the sea to avoid radar detection, roared over the Yorktown before it had a chance to scramble its own fighters. Russian bombers flew over the Enterprise and other U.S. warships as well, closely tailed by American jets. With so many hostile planes and ships jockeying for position, the odds of a miscalculation multiplied.